This is an old article my friend wrote years ago and I'm trying to fix it up and polish it, see what I can make of it while still keeping the same basic idea. Any suggestions are appreciated. It'sMrthejazz... a case not yet solved. 15:03, June 23, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, the first thing that stands out after reading this is that the layout really hurts the article. I know that’s more of a format issue (I’ll discuss it there also) but it hurts the humor as well. By sticking the bed racing records section in the middle, you effectively break any flow to the article. It’s almost like making the reader read a small article and then start another one. I would definitely recommend merging the two bed racing record sections and moving them to the bottom or at least moving both of them to the bottom.

The next thing I noticed about the humor is it tends to get a little out there at times. I think that the majority of this article is done in the style of a mock sporting event and its done well. Then the reader is thrown a few lines like, “the same day that U.S. President Andrew Johnson wet his own bed after severely spraining his foot on the White House steps the day before.” This sentence tells the reader nothing about racecar bed racing and feels like it was forced in to the article. I noticed a couple examples of this type of thing but I think you get the idea.

I really think you missed a good oppurtunity for some laughs by not touching on how racecar bed racing came about. I know you touched on the first race and how bed racing origianted but how did Ahmadallah Raja-Fallujah Smith come up with the idea for racecar bed racing? Was he inspired by old news clippings about the original bed race? Was he at the original bed race? Also, were racecar beds invented specifically for racecar bed racing or were they already invented and someone got the bright idea to actually race them? All of this could be turned into some pretty humorous stuff.

One final suggestion I could make is to look at some actual Wikipedia articles on little known organized sports like Jousting,Curling, etc, to see how there articles are set up and what kinds of information they provide. You can probably apply a lot of the same ideas to your article.

Concept:

6

I usually am not too fond of articles that are completely made up. I tend to enjoy the articles that are based in truth a little more. In this case, I think the idea is pretty clever. You take a very real object, racecar bed, and imagine what it would be like if it was used like its name implies. I really think the idea needs to be fleshed out a bit more for it to really work well though. You started building a good background in the first section when you talked about Harry Foghorn Dynamite coming up with the idea for bed racing and organizing the first event, but then you tend to focus on individual races instead of the “sport” itself. It would be like reading an article on football and just hearing about two games that took place. Including recounts of the races is fine, but you have to give the reader more info on the idea of racecar bed racing itself. How did it evolve? What are some of the major breakthroughs in racecar bed racing? Is there a governing organization? There’s a lot of uncovered ground here. As I stated before, look at some articles on some of the more obscure sports and see what type of info they include. Then just fabricate a backstory for your sport. By doing this, you can also add more chances to build in humor that doesn’t feel forced to the reader. For instance, maybe some guy was the first African American to participate in racecar bed racing. Maybe his racecar bed had gold rims and spinners. The closer you can tie the humor into reality, the funnier it will become. And the best way to achieve that is to build a believable back story.

Prose and formatting:

7

My only problem here is what I talked about in the humor section. The bed racing records really hurt the flow of the article. Your opening section is done very well and it managed to hook me on the first read through. I was interested in the topic. Then I hit this section full of stats and it totally pulled me out of the article. I would highly advise merging the two records sections into one and placing them at the end of the article.

As far as spelling goes, I didn’t catch anything that stood out. I thought your grammer was well done and everything seemed in order. If you want a much better opinion than mine on that kind of stuff, the good folks at the PRS are the ones to talk to.

Images:

4

I think the images here could use some work. The first image seems pretty good but I’m not so sure about it being your opening image. I was kind of dissapointed that there wasn’t a photo of Harry Foghorn Dynamite racing his bed into a wall. I’m not sure what your abilities are as a photo shopper, but you can always ask other Uncyclopedians for assistance if you can’t find an image you want and don’t have the skills to make it yourself.

The second image, the one with Prince Harry, really doesn’t do much at all for your article. Technically it ties in to the article, but just by a thread. To top it off, its not funny. If it was a picture of Harry on a bed rolling down a hill or something, that would be okay. But this just feels like an image that was placed for the sake of having an image. I suggest replacing it with your stretcher picture and replacing the stretcher picture with one of the famed Harry Foghorn Dynamite on his racing bed.

The third and fourth pictures are fine. I don’t think they’re going to cause anyone to fall out of their chairs laughing, but not every image can. I think they fit the article well and there’s nothing wrong with them.

The last image falls under the same category as the prince Harry image. Only it has no ties at all to the main article. I would definitely suggest replacing this one. If you use some of the ideas I suggested in the concept section to increase the article I’m sure you’ll get plenty more ideas for images to use instead of this one.

Miscellaneous:

5.8

Averaged Score

Final Score:

28.8

My overall impression of this article is that what you currently have is a good start. It definitely needs more. I would really suggest taking some time to look over a few Wikipedia articles on some obscure sports to get a feel for what kind of info goes into a sports article. Then apply it to your article. There’s still a lot of good stuff that you have yet to mine out of this concept.